House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi took the rare step Wednesday of giving a marathon speech supporting Democrats’ attempts to legalize the status of young immigrant “dreamers,” in a bid to pressure Republicans to act. Her more than eight-hour speech ranked as the longest given by a member of the House of Representatives in at least a century, possibly ever, focusing on an issue that has dominated the Democratic agenda in recent months. But it also came as her caucus began three days of closed-door meetings to craft a 2018 agenda that can win wider appeal in November’s elections. .....

The Senate failed this evening to pass the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, which would’ve banned abortions after 20 weeks, after Democrats filibustered the bill. In a 51–46 vote, the bill failed to make it out of debate and to a final floor vote. Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner

The world's greatest deliberative body has become the world's greatest constipated body, chained to a rule that no longer makes any sense: the Byrd Rule, which requires 60 Senate votes to end a filibuster on budgetary legislation when that legislation would significantly increase the deficit beyond a ten-year horizon. (Otherwise, the reconciliation process allows for a mere majority for passage.) The so-called "Schumer shutdown" and an endless series of continuing resolutions cry out for ending the legislative filibuster in general on budget matters, where the risk of government shutdown is now ever present. The Democrats claim that the Republicans are...

Senate Democrats took the dramatic step Thursday of eliminating filibusters for most nominations by presidents, a power play they said was necessary to fix a broken system but one that Republicans said will only rupture it further. Democrats used a rare parliamentary move to change the rules so that federal judicial nominees and executive-office appointments can advance to confirmation votes by a simple majority of senators, rather than the 60-vote supermajority that has been the standard for nearly four decades. The immediate rationale for the move was to allow the confirmation of three picks by President Obama to the U.S....

Congress opened its second day under the government shutdown Sunday with a prayer from the chaplain labeling the entire thing a miscalculation and pleading for sanity to prevail. Barry Black, a former Navy admiral and longtime chaplain, warned Congress might “reap the whirlwind” from the shutdown if they don’t find a way to cooperate. “Discontinue the blame game,” he urged them. The partial shutdown hasn’t had a deep impact yet, with it taking effect over a weekend. But Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell warned that it will hit Monday, when the federal workforce would normally return to work.

60 votes is necessary to pass with a FILIBUSTER-PROOF margin. 51 is all that is required to PASS THE BUDGET. So, McConnell, GET IT PASSED. If the Democrats want to shut down government, then MAKE THEM FILIBUSTER ON THE FLOOR LIKE WE USED TO. I, for one, will tune in to hear about why they decided to shut it down, 24/7 until they run out of Senators.

It’s a good thing that the chairman of the Republican National Committee, Ed Gillespie, had to leave the Congress of Racial Equality reception early. If he had stayed a while longer, he might have heard the chairman of CORE, Roy Innis, upbraid the GOP leadership in a powerful speech that was wildly applauded by the audience. Mr. Innis had started his speech by noting that George W. Bush four years ago only got 7% of the black vote. “I asked myself what did this young man do, from a fine family, a family that ran the United Negro College Fund...

- Heat Street reports that the U.S. Supreme Court, thanks to an utterly idiotic ruling by the idiot majority on the idiot 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, may soon have to decide if school children can be arrested for fake belching in class. Thank God this case didn’t come up in 1967, or I would have probably spent a lifetime in prison. I swear I don’t make this stuff up. - The fake editors at the NY Times approved an op/ed piece by someone named Lee Siegel. It’s headline: “For Liberals, Is It Time To Move To Norway?” To which...

This time next week, Gov. Terry Branstad is likely to be the United States ambassador to China, Sen. Chuck Grassley predicted Thursday. The Iowa Republican expects a vote on Branstad’s appointment as early as Tuesday, despite Democratic senators forcing a cloture vote on President Donald Trump’s nomination. “Realize he got out of committee on unanimous consent,” Grassley said. After a hearing last week, the Foreign Relations Committee recommended Branstad’s conformation unanimously on a voice vote. “Now we want to get him through the United States Senate and we have to file a cloture motion on it.” The objections may not...

Congress is preparing to pass an Omnibus spending bill that will fund the government through the rest of fiscal year 2017. Democrats love the bill because it fully funds Planned Parenthood and specifically omits many of President Trump's legislative priorities, such as funding for his proposed border wall with Mexico.House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi undoubtedly spoke for most Democrats when she praised the bill on Monday:Â“We have eliminated more than 160 Republican poison pill riders, ranging from undermining a womanÂ’s right to reproductive health to dismantling Dodd-FrankÂ’s vital Wall Street consumer protections... The omnibus does not fund President TrumpÂ’s immoral...

The top Republican in the Senate on Tuesday rejected President Donald Trump's suggestion that his party change the chamber's rules to undercut the ability of Democrats to block legislation with filibusters. "There is an overwhelming majority on a bipartisan basis that is not interested in changing the way the Senate operates on the legislative calendar," Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told reporters.

Former Democratic Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle says Democrats are more to blame in the destruction of “institutional pillars” of the upper chamber than Republicans. In a podcast interview released Sunday with Real Clear Politics Executive Editor Carl Cannon, the South Dakota Democrat described how Democrats and Republicans argued with each other over the filibuster and the nuclear option just a few years ago. (Skip) [Daschle:] Unfortunately, Democrats have far dirtier hands when it comes to the erosion of the institutional pillars of the Senate than Republicans going all the way back to–you know, they used to do filibusters in...

Anyone buying that? No? OK Neil Gorsuch has been confirmed to a lifetime SCOTUS appointment, there’s nothing they can do about it, and Democrats are furious. Lefties who demanded the “nuclear option” be employed when they were in power, are simply aghast that the GOP has called Harry Reid’s bluff and used it against them. Remember, as Reid famously said, “Let them do it, why would we care.”

In the first week of April, 2017, a nostalgic nation watched as one of the grand old institutions crumbled into dust: the Senate filibuster was removed from the toolbox for presidential appointments. Many on both sides of the aisle shed a tear or two as the US Senate lost one of its most famous and romantic tools; until the Democrats overplayed their hand on the Gorsuch nomination, a single Senator could hold up a presidential appointee with a filibuster. No more. Before you shed any more tears, though, dear Gentle Reader, please consider who had long been empowered with this...

Now that the judicial filibuster in the U.S. Senate has been nuked, it’s time to look at the political fallout going forward. And for Democrats, the news is all bad. Here are three reasons why Democrats just made a dumb mistake by filibustering Neil Gorsuch. 1. The GOP is now free to put real Scalia-Thomas types throughout the judiciary The argument for years as to why Republicans needed stealth Supreme Court candidates like David Souter, Anthony Kennedy, and John Roberts (who have all gone on to be disappointments to varying degrees) was the filibuster. However, now that it’s no longer...

Back when I was a young staffer in the House of Representatives, we viewed the Senate with some disdain. Senators -- and more so their staffs -- were imperious. They viewed themselves as being in the higher chamber and employed arcane rules, most notoriously the filibuster, to block actions they didn't like. But I've learned a thing or two in the more than 40 years since I left my job on the House Judiciary Committee, and I've changed my mind about those Senate rules. Sometimes we need a brake, judiciously applied, to give politicians and the country the time to...

In 2003, when Chuck Shumer began filibustering Bush’s nominees to the lower courts — a departure that tested what was a relatively new “norm” — the GOP came close to getting rid of it. In 2013, after the GOP had successfully filibustered 5 — yes, just 5 —

Hillary Clinton's running mate is predicting Democrats will go "nuclear" if Republicans try to stonewall a potential Supreme Court nominee by Clinton. Tim Kaine on Friday said he believes Senate Democrats will change the chamber's rules if they run into GOP obstruction in 2017. Kaine, however, said Friday that there's a "significant likelihood" that Garland will get confirmed this year.